The aim of this forum is to reflect on the teachings of the Buddha and writings of Ven. Ñāṇavīra Thera. It is presented by individuals whose lives were significantly affected by an encounter with the teachings, in the hope that others, too, might appreciate the right-view guidance which is offered therein. It suggests an alternative approach to the Buddha's original Teaching, and perhaps serve as a useful eye-opener for those seeking an understanding of its more fundamental principles. It can also communicate the attitude of earnestness towards Dhamma practice, which is regarded not merely as a matter of choice but rather an existential necessity. For without this basic attitude, the practice of Buddhist meditation will remain in the worldly sphere and will never be able to bear the fruits of noble insight leading to liberation from the 'world'.

Ñāṇavīra Thera:

“The principal aim of these Notes on Dhamma is to point out certain current misinterpretations, mostly traditional, of the Pali Suttas, and to offer in their place something certainly less easy but perhaps also less inadequate. These Notes assume, therefore, that the reader is (or is prepared to become) familiar with the original texts, and in Pali (for even the most competent translations sacrifice some essential accuracy to style, and the rest are seriously misleading). They assume, also, that the reader's sole interest in the Pali Suttas is a concern for his own welfare. The reader is presumed to be subjectively engaged with an anxious problem, the problem of his existence, which is also the problem of his suffering. There is therefore nothing in these pages to interest the professional scholar, for whom the question of personal existence does not arise; for the scholar's whole concern is to eliminate or ignore the individual point of view in an effort to establish the objective truth -- a would-be impersonal synthesis of public facts. The scholar's essentially horizontal view of things, seeking connexions in space and time, and his historical approach to the texts, disqualify him from any possibility of understanding a Dhamma that the Buddha himself has called akālika, 'timeless'. Only in a vertical view, straight down into the abyss of his own personal existence, is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation; and only a man who does apprehend this is prepared to listen to the Buddha's Teaching. But human kind, it seems, cannot bear very much reality: men, for the most part, draw back in alarm and dismay from this vertiginous direct view of being and seek refuge in distractions. “

Thank you Atula for informing us of Akalika.I wish you well with your new forum!Metta

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725